


Persephone

by kelex



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-26
Updated: 2015-08-26
Packaged: 2018-04-17 10:24:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,965
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4663116
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kelex/pseuds/kelex
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>One of the Doctor's trips doesn't go exactly as planned, and both Rose and the Doctor pay the price.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Persephone

**Author's Note:**

  * For [sequence_fairy](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sequence_fairy/gifts).



> for sequencefairy's prompt, on timepetalsprompts.
> 
> There is room for a sequel in this, in which Rose becomes the Bad Wolf and either saves the Doctor or doesn't.

Not for the first time, Rose was glad to be wearing boots this go-round. Not just because they were protection, but the _traction._ Even if she hadn't had the Doctor's hand in a death grip, she'd have been able to keep up with him this time.

Funny what goes through your mind when you're running for your life.

The cargo freighter they'd landed on was in a slowly-decaying orbit around a binary star. Their power systems were down because the propulsion was down, which also meant life support was down to minimal backup. And the propulsion room was on the _complete opposite end_ of the bloody ship.

And to top it all off, the TARDIS had just swanned off on its own, leaving them stranded in the middle of chaos. The Doctor had told her it was a hostile response mechanism, but she knew him well enough to hear the lie. He was no more certain why the TARDIS had gone than she was. 

But that was fine; it just meant she and the Doctor had even more incentive to save the crew of the _Persephone_ , and that meant saving the ship. 

"Easy peasy," the Doctor had said, then taken Rose's hand. "Off we go, propulsion room!"

\-----

By the time they got to the propulsion room, the Doctor was beginning to worry. Even though there was only a skeleton crew remaining on board the ship, the air was already getting a bit thin.

And as he put his hand against the door, he realized why. Jerking his hand away from the red-hot door, he slammed a fist against the wall-mounted communications panel. "Captain Toole, you got a fire in the propulsion room, and it's eating up your oxygen. Any way to vent it out?"

"Negative," came the static-laden reply. "No airlock controls are functional in the propulsion room."

"Neither is your fire control. Get the rest of your crew ready to leave, because if we can't get that fire out, this ship's gonnna blow up."

Rose took the Doctor's hand and laced their fingers together. A vote of confidence if there ever was one, and Rose could see it working. Under the leather jacket, the Doctor's shoulders straightened, and he answered her squeeze with one of his own. 

"Right. Rose, get behind me. And here." He took off his jacket, and wrapped it over her head and face to protect her from the smoke and the fire. "Just in case. Stay out here."

Even in the middle of the crisis, Rose found it almost impossible to be terrified because she was cocooned in the Doctor. His warmth and his scent wrapped around her, and she was struggling to clear her head of it when the propulsion room door opened. She gave a short scream as heat and flame rushed over them. "Doctor!"

"Stay there, Rose, don't move!" His jumper was almost no protection at all, but he ignored the blistering heat as he sought desperately for the airlock. He found it by touch, and reached to fumble the sonic out of his--oh, no. Rose had the sonic because it was in his jacket pocket. He couldn't ask her to come into the room, but he _needed_ the sonic. "All right, listen. Rose, listen to me. I need the sonic. It's in the inside pocket, left side." He was struggling to keep his voice level, for her sake. 

As soon as he'd mentioned the sonic, she'd started patting down the jacket pockets, and his directions led her to it instantly. "Got it! Where are you?"

"No!" Panic engulfed him, then, as he saw Rose struggling to get out of the relative safety of his jacket cocoon. "Just… take two steps to your left. Feel that console? Lean over it and hold out your hand!"

"What about you? You all right?" she shouted as she started inching blindly over to the console.

"I'm always fine!" He tried not to sound impatient, but they wouldn't be able to handle this much longer, because he was already starting to burn. 

They wouldn't have to.

The Doctor's hand closed around the sonic, and he pointed it at the console. Broken connections mended, and the airlock opened.

Lunging at Rose, the Doctor's body slammed into hers and rolled her back outside the door and into the hallway. He soniced it shut against the vacuum, making sure she was safe when the fire and the atmosphere in the room both got sucked out into space. His vision was already blacking out, but he managed to get the airlock closed.

The hallway door opened as Rose pounded on it, and for a brief second, he thought the pounding was her heartbeat ringing in his ears. He realized he was coughing instead of speaking, and he didn't have the strength to fight Rose pulling him out into the hallway. "Too late," he rasped out, and closed his eyes. 

"Doctor?" Rose's voice trembled as she felt for both heartbeats, and when she found both, only then did she go back to the wall panel. "Captain? It's Rose. The Doctor says it's too late, better push off with the rest of the crew."

"What about you two? Your ship's gone, we can wait--" The captain didn't sound thrilled about leaving people behind, but didn't get a chance to finish. 

"We passed an escape hatch, yeah? We'll be fine, you don't have time to wait, just go!" Rose closed the channel on the captain mid-sentence, and braced herself on the wall as the ship shuddered twice. Once to release the captain's lifeboat, and once in a death rattle. 

The Doctor was already struggling to his feet, and hid his glowing hands in his pockets. "Come on, then."

A computerized voice blared. **Ten minutes until total systems failure.**

Rose slid her arms around the Doctor as sparks from the dying power systems blew around them. "Come on., you, let's go."

Thankful for the help, the Doctor leaned on Rose until they got to the escape hatch. He physically forced the inoperative door open, glad the regeneration glow had faded as he held the process back.

He knew it was over as soon as he looked.

Rose came in behind him, and didn't see anything amiss. She helped the Doctor close the door, and watched as he closed off the rest of the ship to direct all the remaining life support to their room here. 

Greedily, he wanted every second he had left with Rose, no matter how much it hurt. 

There was enough power in the system to operate the launch sequence, so he set it to automatic launch at the ninety-second mark before turning to Rose. "All set."

"Let's go, then." Rose turned when the capsule lid raised, and her face froze when saw the interior.

One bed. One instrumentation panel. One stasis generator. "Well, it's going to be a tight squeeze, but I think we can make it."

**Seven minutes until total systems failure.**

"Get in, Rose." The Doctor's voice was hoarse and raspy, but firm.

"No. Not without you." Stubborn, uncompromising, unyielding. "We go together." _Or not at all_ remained unspoken.

"Rose, please, just get in." The Doctor changed tactics in midstream when he realized she wasn't going to budge. "I've still got to program in the pick-up signal so the TARDIS can find the pod and bring it in."

"All right, then." She relented at that; if he was calling the TARDIS, then he was coming with her, because she certainly couldn't operate the TARDIS on her own. "Glad we got that sorted."

"Me, too." God, he loved her. The Doctor turned back to the console, making it bleep and whir in complaint as he programmed in the TARDIS pick-up signal as well as the sonic pulses that would trigger the emergency return protocols that would take Rose home.

Rose climbed into the pod, lying down and scrunching to one side. "Kind of tight in here--glad I took a shower last night," she called out, trying to lighten the terror. It wasn't really working.

"Almost done here," replied the Doctor, glad she couldn't see the crumbling lies in his face. 

**Five minutes until total systems failure.**

"Better hurry." Rose settled herself best she could, waiting on the Doctor.

The lid to the pod closed suddenly, the whoosh of the seal making her panic. "Doctor?"

"It's done, Rose." The Doctor's voice filtered over the speaker in the pod. "You have to go now. The retrieval signal is set, so the TARDIS will pick you up and take you back home." A groan of pain, and then he continued. "I promised to keep you safe."

A feeling of horror washed over Rose as she realized he was not coming with her. "No!" Rose beat her fist against the clear plastisteel porthole. "Let me out of here! Or, no, you get in here, right now!"

The Doctor steeled himself against the emotions in her voice. "I can't, and you know it. Only room for one, and that's you."

Knowing and accepting were two entirely different concepts, Rose realized in a heartbeat. "No, please, you can't! Don't leave me, Doctor, not now! You said forever, you promised!" She was sobbing, crying, and didn't even care.

**Four minutes until--** The Doctor muted the countdown, but kept an eye on the clock.

"I was gonna give you forever, too, for as long as I could've." No reason to hold back now. "My sweet, brave, special Rose. Saved my life, you did, and I never told you. You're absolutely fantastic, you are, and don't you forget it." Another stab of pain, and the Doctor forced it back for a few more minutes with Rose. After those few, it wouldn't matter anymore.

"Doctor, _please._ There has to be another way." Rose was begging now, pleading. "Don't do this to me, I can't stand to lose you. You're everything, everything in the world, everything in the whole universe, you can't do this, don't leave me alone!!"

Three and counting down. 

He was going to make good use of them. 

"Now you listen to me, Rose Tyler, and you listen good. You are never going to be alone. You got a heart the size of the TARDIS, and the worst thing you can do is close it off. I was closed off, couldn't bear the thought of myself or what I'd done. But then I met you, Rose. A girl who showed mercy to a Dalek, who showed kindness in the face of my fear and my hate, and you shared everything with me." His fingers tightened on the console as the final launch countdown started. "And while I'm still me, I want to say, I love you, Rose Tyler."

"I love you!" she screamed, kicking and punching at the capsule lid as it started to lauch.

As the tiny pod arced away from the ship, the Doctor watched it leave, willing it to get out of the blast radius. When he was sure that it had, that Rose was safe, he let go.

Regeneration washed over him, gold artron energy blasting out and destroying the ship around him. The TARDIS could've contained it; that's what they were built for. But not a simple cargo freighter. It dissolved into debris around him, and he didn't even get the chance to try out his new lungs.

He just drifted, a skinny and shaggy-haired ice cube in ill-fitting clothes, just one more piece of space trash.

Rose's last vision, before the stasis kicked in and put her to sleep, was to see the ship explode. The last she felt as the suspended animation took over was a hard, numbing cold that seeped into every corner and closed off everything she was feeling.

Then, nothingness.


End file.
